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SAINA’S VICTORY or SANIA’S TAMASHA:

After Germany’s victory last night, all the loyal Germany fans including me had all the reasons to celebrate. While reading the newspaper today morning, I was flabbergasted to see a comparatively small article on the person who is making us, our nation all proud of her: Saina Nehwal.

She has marked June 2010, a momentous month for all Indians with three titles in three successive weeks. The very determined, focused 20 years old, who apparently doesn’t care about her rankings but finds it more essential to perk up her game and fitness, positively deserves much more than just a few articles here and there. Or what is called ‘publicity’ in our country. And why not?

On the other hand Sania Mirza who crashed out of the Wimbledon Singles against Russia’s Nadia Petrova, was in the news for the past several months for a ‘pure nonsensical’ controversy surrounding her, after she declared that she would get married to former cricketer and captain of the Pakistan team, Shoaib Malik. A controversial person himself. In a country like India, so big, full of so called ‘traditions’, beliefs, where people still believe in superstitions, a ‘Hyderabadi’ girl getting married to a Pakistani, if that was not less, Pakistan asking her to represent their country for the sport, was nothing but a shock for the country.

While all this ‘tamasha’ which was completely irrelevant was happening, our newspapers were flooded with this news. Sania was all over the place. Sport critics, politicians, film stars and just everybody who claims to be very considerate about this country commented on this in every possible way.

I’m not against the publicity given to her but I am strongly against the kind of publicity given to her. Starting from the beginning of her career, whether it was for her short tennis clothes, her comments on ‘safe sex’or sitting bare feet at the Hopman Cup in 2008.

I think every Indian did celebrate and was proud of Sania when she won the 2003 Wimbledon Championships Girls doubles title. She still is the first Indian woman to be seeded in a Grand Slam tennis tournament. Of course nobody has forgotten her achievement as the first Indian to win a WTA singles title or the Padma Shri to her credit. Her first Grand slam title at 2009 Australian Open left every Indian proud of her achievements.

But that’s where everything should have stopped. There was no need for all the publicity regarding her wedding or how controversial her relationship was or anything to do with her personal life. I don’t think anybody was either interested or had the time for it. But it still made news. Unfortunately. After which the same Sania Mirza was the judge for the Femina Miss India contest this year. I still cannot digest the fact that someone who was so criticized for being disloyal to her country and even being called a ‘Traitor’ by some newspaper was made a judge for the event.

Sometimes I wonder what is it that people wish to read. Is it the pure tamasha, or is it some pure no-nonsense news which forms a very small part of the newspaper. Do we really want to celebrate the achievements of a person like Saina Sehwal or we still prefer giving her a small mention in a newspaper and then continue reading about someone this country can do without.

Kudos to Saina, we all are Proud of you.:)

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Comments

Completely agree. Everything as small as a celeb's wedding makes it in the papers. Dhoni's wedding did 2 days back. It was unnecessary and irrelevant, and had nothing to do with any progress in sports. What was it doing in the sports section?And as far as wondering what people like to read goes, they read what the newspapers give to them. They don't choose..

Yes, I agree with you, along with those people who silently skip the section containing newpaper's daily rubbish quotient.

One important think to note is that, even though we critisize this right now,but when we are on the other side, ie when WE are the people who bear the responsibility to sell the newspapers, then we have to indugde in such rubbish work. Though again this is a debatable issue wether we need such news at all, another point which arises with it is, wether we need so many newspapers anyway ( noting india's multilinguistic needs).I read in an article on how difficult it is to work for a newspaper in US, for a simple reason that there are only selected few which get sold, and I couldnt help but compare that with our Indian scenario, where there are outrageously huge number of papers, and not just do they get recognition , but get sold too.

Traveling alone since I was sixteen; from the then deserted pathways of Auroville to teaching monks at a monastery in Dharamsala, from cooking for strangers in Morocco to make a living to finding my family roots in the mystical land of Benares; little did I know that a timid little boy who was brought up in an unconventional milieu would someday articulate his thoughts through visuals that would speak his mind.